Wake Me Up Inside
by Mousme
Summary: Sam gets his soul back, and Dean is afraid. Spoilers up to 6.11


Title: **Wake Me Up Inside**

Prompt/Summary: Sam gets his soul back, and Dean is afraid. Written for the a href=.com/samdean_**Hug Time Now**/a comment-fic meme. Original prompt by the lovely and talented kate_mct can be found a href=.com/samdean_?thread=397816#t397816here/a.

Characters: Dean, Sam, Bobby

Rating: PG13

Wordcount: 2,379

Disclaimer: This is the very true story of how Sam Winchester might have gotten his soul back. Except that it never happened, which makes it fiction, and thus not real.

Warnings: Swearing. Aaaaaaaaaaangst! And manpain! Spoilers up to 6.11.

Neurotic Author's Note #1: Okay, so the prompt asked for schmoop and cuddles, and instead poor **kate_mct** got angst and tears. But there is a hug, so I guess all isn't lost.

Neurotic Author's Note #2: Comment-fic. No beta, no nothing. You know the drill. Please be forgiving of typos and occasionally wacky syntax.

Neurotic Author's Note #3: I'm sorry about the title. Truly. But it works in this context, I swear! No, I promise. Plus, I like the song. (Shh!)

* * *

Somehow, Dean hadn't expected the screaming. He should have, he tells himself as he stares numbly while Sam screams and writhes on the tiny cot, he should have seen this coming. There's no way this could have ended any other way than with Sam suffering. He should have expected this. The thought repeats in his mind, on loop, and Sam keeps screaming,

Death turns to him and nods, once. "You have what you wished for," he says.

_I should have been more careful_, Dean thinks a little hysterically, but Death doesn't say anything else, merely gives him a look that's all too understanding.

And then he's gone.

Sam keeps screaming, and Dean just hugs the wall, bracing himself against it, knees locked, because he can't bring himself to go over to the bed and try to make the screaming stop. Bobby's kneeling stiffly by the cot, and he looks up in a clear invitation for Dean to _do something, already_, but his legs just won't work, and so he stays put. Then, abruptly, the screaming stops, and Sam's eyes roll back into his head. For a moment Dean hopes that maybe, mercifully, he's lost consciousness, but instead Sam makes a horrible choking sound and begins to convulse, spit frothing at the corners of his mouth, muscles contracting spasmodically and making his back arch.

"Dean, help me, God damn it!" Bobby snaps, fumbling with the handcuffs keeping Sam locked to the bed and which are now digging into his wrists hard enough to draw blood as Sam seizes.

For another split-second Dean stays right where he is, then he finds some kind of momentum out of nowhere. He feels as though he's falling forward rather than walking, but it works well enough. He drops to his knees, thinks absently that he's going to feel those bruises tomorrow, and unlocks the cuffs on his side of the cot with hands that don't even have the faintest hint of a tremor to them. The keys and cuffs drop to the floor of the panic room with a metallic clang, and then he's standing again and bolting for the stairs as fast as he can on legs that have suddenly turned to rubber on him. He makes it as far as Bobby's downstairs bathroom, just barely manages to lift the seat before he's puking the quarter of a bottle of bourbon he put away over the course of the afternoon.

He stays on the bathroom floor, wipes the back of his mouth with a hand that stubbornly refuses to shake, leans against the wall next to the toilet, and stares at the half-open door. His flask is still in his pocket, still has some bourbon left in it, and it helps to chase away the bitter taste of vomit and bile, but he barely feels the rest. He's stopped feeling all that much when he drinks, which he supposes is a bad sign. Even when he was with Lisa and Ben he could tell when he'd had too much, but now he thinks he could easily down enough alcohol to poison himself thoroughly and barely wobble on his way to bed to die.

Fuck. Dean scrubs at his face with his hands. He's getting morbid.

The door opens, and Bobby's staring down at him, his expression a fascinating mixture of love and pity and exasperation. Dean shifts his stare from the doorknob to Bobby's face, and waits to be given yet another one of the man's patented 'tough-love' speeches, which Bobby seems to think are what's warranted in situations like these. Because Dean doesn't feel like shit enough as it is. Bobby opens his mouth, closes it, then opens it again.

"He's out, now. Sleepin'. Went right from convulsing to the arms of Morpheus, and I for one ain't about to wake him up. Get yourself cleaned up, boy, and I'll make coffee and crack open a can of stew."

Dean shakes his head. He's not hungry, doesn't remember the last time he even wanted food. He used to enjoy eating, he thinks with a sudden pang.

"I wasn't asking," Bobby says, not unkindly. "You got five minutes," he turns on his heel, pulls the door partially closed again. "And flush that toilet!"

He forces himself to eat at least some of the food Bobby puts in front of him, and after a couple of bites is surprised to find that he actually is hungry. Bobby very pointedly doesn't ask him when the last time he ate was, for which he's eternally grateful, because between the clusterfuck with Death and getting Sam's soul back and Bobby nearly getting killed, he doesn't actually remember. He thinks it might actually be about two days. The coffee helps, too, but not enough. He stands at the top of the stairs to the basement, leaning tiredly against the wall. Bobby puts a hand on his shoulder.

"Go to bed, Dean. Your brother's makin' up for a year and a half without sleep. I bet you anything he'll sleep until the morning, at the very least."

There was a time when Dean would have refused. When he would have insisted on staying with Sammy no matter what. Except that he's not sure that's still Sammy down there. Reason tells him that his brother is back, that Death kept his promise, but... he closes his eyes, sees Sam watch with something like fascination as the vampire forces its blood into him. He slumps against the wall.

"Yeah, okay. I'll take the couch, Bobby. Thanks."

He sleeps like the dead, for the first time in months.

The house is quiet when he awakens. His head is throbbing, but that's nothing new these days. He doesn't remember drinking last night, but that barely means anything anymore. A quick look around reveals a note from Bobby letting him know that he's gone to run errands and to help himself to more coffee and whatever's in the fridge. Dean pauses at the head of the stairs to the basement on the way to the kitchen, listening, but there's no sound coming from downstairs.

_Coward_, he tells himself, because there's no one else to say it. He doesn't want to go down there, like a little kid afraid of imaginary monsters under the stairs. The monsters in Dean's world have always been real, though, and what's down there in Bobby's panic room... it's a fifty-fifty shot, he figures, and hates himself for thinking like that. It's still quiet. Sam is probably sleeping, but the last time there was this much quiet coming from Bobby's panic room Sam had been in the middle of a seizure from withdrawal.

He takes a single step down, listening to the wood creak and groan beneath his weight, then a second. Takes the rest of the stairs at a trot before he loses his nerve, and presses his face to the tiny window in the door which allows him to see in, and his breath catches in his throat when he sees that the cot is empty. He unbars the door in a single, swift motion, cursing himself for ever thinking it was safe to leave Sam by himself, because now he's loose and God only knows—

Dean stops in his tracks. "Sam?"

There's a familiar figure huddled in the furthest corner of the room, legs drawn up and hands laced over its head, ankles crossed, as though Sam is trying to make himself as small as physically possible. As though he's simply trying to disappear, to make the wall or maybe the ground swallow him whole. Dean swallows a sudden lump in his throat, takes a hesitant step forward.

"Sammy?"

There's no response other than a slight tremor in Sam's body, a stiffening of the limbs, as if he's trying to draw them in tighter to himself, which is pretty much physically impossible, Dean thinks, watching him. He can't let himself think that this is a trap. It's been a year and a half since he's had his brother with him, really had his brother, and now Sam is hurting and it's Dean's fault. He shuffles forward, one foot in front of the next, until he's barely an arm's span away from him.

"Sam... you in there?"

He thinks Sam heard him, but there's no way to be sure. He reaches out until his hand comes into contact with the wall, lets himself slide down, slowly, until he's sitting next to his brother, their knees all but touching. At this range, he can see smears of dried blood on Sam's jeans and t-shirt where the cuts on his wrists bled, and it makes him a little queasy. There was a time when he would never have let something like that go untreated, but he left Sam all night, like this, and his stomach clenches at the thought.

For a while there's nothing but silence, punctuated only by the quiet hitching of Sam's breath. His brother is crying, Dean realizes, something he hasn't seen him do in years. He knows Sam cried when he died, but he never saw that. He thinks that might be the last time Sam ever allowed himself to shed tears over anything or anyone. It's restrained, now, as though Sam is holding everything together with a few tenuous threads, the only thing betraying the tears those almost silent sobs. If Dean were further away in the room, he might not even be able to hear them.

Sam's waiting for him, is the next thing he realizes. Waiting for him to say something, do something, anything. He's pulled in on himself, not daring to speak or move, because he's come back all this way and now he's afraid. Dean doesn't remember the last time he saw Sam afraid, either. He thinks it was before he died. Everything with Sam can be traced to that day in New Harmony, Indiana.

He reaches over and puts a hand firmly on Sam's knee, and that's all it takes for what's left of Sam's self-control to crumble away. All the tension drains from his body and he collapses on himself with a high-pitched keening sound that seems to stab right through Dean's ribcage.

"Aw, Sammy..."

It's awkward and more than a little uncomfortable, but he pulls at Sam until his brother is sprawled halfway into his lap, wraps his arms around Sam's shoulders —and seriously, when did he get this big?— and holds on for dear life. At first Sam doesn't move, just keeps making that same, desolate keening noise until finally his breath gives out, and then the sound turns to outright sobbing, and he clutches at Dean for all he's worth, fingers digging into the fabric of his t-shirt. There's nothing healing or cathartic about the tears: they're messy and filled with pain and loneliness and terror, and no amount of soothing on Dean's part seems to be able to stem the flow even a little bit.

_You have what you wished for._

"Sammy, Sammy it's okay," he says, a little desperately. "It's okay."

Eventually, Sam is too exhausted to keep going. Dean's t-shirt is soaked, and Sam is still racked with sobs, but he's limp and pliant in Dean's arms, face still pressed into his brother's sternum.

"Sam?"

"You should have left me there." Sam's voice is raw, as though someone replaced his vocal cords with sandpaper. It's as though he hasn't spoken for a hundred years —and maybe he hasn't, Dean thinks a little hysterically. He shifts a little, so that Sam's head is pillowed in his lap rather than mashed up against his shirt.

"I couldn't do that. You know I couldn't."

"You should have left me there."

"Sam..."

This time, there's no answer.

"Sam, how could I? I couldn't... not with them. Not when I knew what they were doing to you."

"I deserved it."

"Sam..."

He can feel Sam shuddering in his arms, sobs welling up in his chest even though he's too exhausted to keep crying the way he was before. "All those people... You should have left me there."

He thinks he knows what Sam is talking about. "It wasn't you. You know that. It was never you."

"It's all gone," Sam says, staring at the far wall. His face is unrecognisable, swollen and glistening with tears. His nose is running, too. Sam's always been a messy crier, Dean remembers. "You should have just killed me when you could. I know you thought about it. I saw you."

Dean flinches, remembering that split-second in which he'd stared at Death's ring on his finger and thought,_ maybe I should_...

"No."

Sam's next words are all but inaudible. "Why did you bring me back?"

He senses that Sam isn't expecting him to answer, that it's a rhetorical question. This is his cue to say something to lighten everything up, to deflect, defend, help them both build up those walls that keep them sane —except that Sam has enough walls to contend with right now. Dean takes a breath, tugs Sam back up into his arms, head against his shoulder, and hugs him tight enough that if he squeezes just a little harder he might succeed in cracking a rib.

"I'm only going to say this once," he says, low and fierce, right into Sam's ear, "so listen up. No repeats, no do-overs, no rain-checks. I brought you back because you're my brother and I love you, and I want you here with me. What's the point in being soul mates if yours is locked away where mine can't reach it?"

Time stands still. Then, ever so slowly, Sam uncurls a little. He brings up his arms to wrap them around Dean, and returns the hug with bone-crushing intensity, burying his face in the crook of Dean's neck, the way he used to do when he was a little kid.

When Bobby returns late in the afternoon, he finds them still locked in each other's arms, and the last of the tears has long since dried from both their faces.


End file.
